So online poker is pretty dead, huh? It’s a late Saturday night/Sunday AM in Las Vegas, and we just need two more players to fill up the lone $1 sit-n-go on WSOP.com. There’s one player waiting on a $100 SNG, and I’m already down about $12 on the most active NLH and PLO cash tables.
Still, for $1 and a tepid desire to get back in some sort of action somewhere, I’m gonna pay to experience something close to what free players do that makes Caesars Interactive worth $4.4 billion.
UPDATE: Total bullshit. I was all-in with pocket 9s, aggro-dipbag re-raised, my computer was giving me the rainbow swirly, and his pocket Kings held up. 8th place out of 9.
Online poker is tough these days! I’ve got a ways to go, obv, before I can win $4.83 for first.
Want a sense of the new world we’re seeing here in Nevada, thanks to licensed and regulated online poker? Game-wise, the combo of WSOP.com and Ultimate Poker is still hardly a shell of the glory days of PokerStars and Full Tilt. But what is different is the way online poker is showing up around town … on billboards, TV, radio … in snail mail, on top of slot machines … I’m kinda waiting to see it show up at the 50-yard-line at Sam Boyd Stadium — because really, shouldn’t there be a WSOP.com Silver Bowl?
Outside the Box? WSOP.com apparently thinks real money online poker might appeal to people inclined to sit around waiting for good stuff to just show up at their door. [pic: @RobertGoldfarb]
Until then, however, the WSOP is left to consider other means to present their brand (and an entire industry!) with newfound legitimacy. According to the presumably reliable delivery driver from Noble Pie Parlor in Reno, WSOP.com provided some 500 of these boxes for their handmade “New York Street”-style ‘zas.
WSOP.com is ready to launch. Like for real. And for real money, too. This according to executives for Caesars Interactive Entertainment, who hosted a semi-private conference call Monday morning to lay out their plans.
It’s happening on 9/19 at 9:19am … 9-1-9 … not to be confused with Herman Cain’s 9-9-9, which didn’t exactly get him to November. Non-sequiturs aside, a new era of online poker really is upon us now — just in time for the November Nine, no less. At least in Nevada, where it may or may not be a total coincidence that LAS was one of the very first airports to offer free wi-fi.
You’ve probably already started filtering through the buzz, bolstering, and requisite bitching on Twitter and 2+2. But in case you missed it, or just for posterity’s sake, here’s the raw audio of that conference call, where a whole host of Caesars suits, some new, some familiar, made their legal and regulated internet gaming plans official.
In this week’s episode, er, I mean last week’s … Andrew embarks on the Las Vegas Strip low-stakes Summer circuit (Rio, Venetian, Caesars Palace, Bellagio, Aria, Wynn …) only to make a valiant 0-fer run, leaving us time to discuss a caravan of high-stakes cash games sprouting up around town — it’s open-face Chinese blossoming at the Rio, Doyle popping up at the Venetian, and Doyle doing his best Deadmau5 in the Ivey Room. Meanwhile Dave takes a look at the Carnevale of Poker and the fields it draws, and we all get a chuckle out of getting so drunk at the Carnival Court that you’re banned forever from the WSOP. (Surely no one will get that drunk at the premiere party for the online poker documentary Bet Raise Fold, right?) All that and some patch bonuses available for those willing to pimp for WSOP.com, Ultimate Poker, and/or those crazy kinds at QuadJacks.
Maybe you’re kinda like me (or not) and just getting into the 2013 Stanley Cup World Series of Poker? It’s a long haul, sure, but know the basics of these stories and you can feel confident about having a pretty good grasp on how the deal has gone down at the WSOP this summer, and at least won’t sound like a total poker dunce while hosting your next weekly homegame and/or podcast.
1. Chad Holloway Wins
Whoop-whoop all PokerNews-er-ati! Suck it dealers and floor staff! With Chad’s $85k win in Event #1 comes a) proof that just a few years in poker media can make a clean-cut golden boy look disheveled and scruffy … and b) inspiration for many wearing a badge to think that maybe we shouldn’t give up our on-the-felt dreams just quite yet. [ESPN]
World Series of Poker Executive Director Ty Stewart [recently] experienced that pain.
Recently, Stewart made light of early troubles that befell Ultimate Poker, the first legal pay-to-play online gambling website in the U.S., which launched April 30.
First, Ultimate was caught using an unlicensed and much maligned service provider to identify new players. Then, a glitch in the website caused two 9 of spades to appear on the flop in a game of hold’em.
“I think the market is ready for a first-class product,” Stewart told Case Keefer of the Las Vegas Sun while touting the World Series of Poker’s planned Nevada-based pay-to-play website.
Last week, the World Series of Poker suffered its own glitch. The unlicensed website briefly went live, letting players gain access to the pay-to-play area.
Caesars Interactive Entertainment, which owns the World Series of Poker, caught the mistake, shut down the site, and notified Nevada gaming regulators.
The laughter you’re hearing emanates from the corporate headquarters of Station Casinos, majority owner of Ultimate Gaming, which operates Ultimate Poker.
#1. WSOP.com did not launch real-money poker last week as rumors suggested they would. But it’s a safe bet they will be launching the actual WSOP this week – on May 29th, to be exact. WSOP officials have indicated a desire to run online satellites to the 2013 Main Event (which starts July 6th). If that remains their goal, then there’s a pretty small window remaining for launch.
#2. Massachusetts is returning to the issue of online poker only weeks after a House attempt to insert regulated online poker into the budget was killed at the last minute. Now GOP members of the State Senate are trying the same trick . We should learn the fate of their attempt sooner than later as the clock winds down on MA’s budget process.
#3. Illinois closes their current legislative session at week’s end. It seems unlikely that an online gambling measure will reappear and progress to law before the close. But stranger things have definitely happened. And the larger issue of gambling expansion remains in play during the last days of the session, which could potentially produce prodigious bursts of activity in Springfield.
Kevin Saul $194,178 – WSOP-C Foxwoods Main Event
Bryan Piccioli $211,575 – WSOP APAC Event #1
Jim Collopy $69,662 – WSOP APAC Event #2
The World Series of Poker brand had themselves a fine time over the last few days on different sides of the globe. Big names, new tournaments, and interesting results. The WSOP APAC is underway in Australia while the WSOP-Circuit at Foxwoods wrapped up their Main Event.
Professional player Brian Piccioli captured the first ever WSOP APAC bracelet in a brand new event, something called the “Accumulator” at the Crown Casino in Melbourne. The tournament took reentry events to the next level, where players could not only enter each of the three starting days but could also play even if they had chips at the end of previous days. Whatever part of their stacks remained after Day 1A/B/C were combined and play continued on Day 2. Piccioli won they event with only his Day C stack after busting both A and B but worked it will for the $211,575 prize and gold bracelet.
Long time professional and former online master Kevin Saul is the latest WSOP Circuit Main Event Champion. There were 615 entrees into the inaugural Foxwoods WSOP-C tournament and Saul made quick work of the final table to pick up his shiny new ring, the near $200k payday, and his entry into the WSOP National Championship coming up in New Orleans.
History could be made later today when the WSOP APAC Mixed Event is played to a winner. Phil Ivey leads the final table with Daniel Negreanu right behind him. Ivey will be trying to capture his 9th WSOP bracelet while Negreanu is looking to break his 5 year bracelet slump to pick up his 5th.
Rio’s Bottle Package Get The Party Started!
Two Night Min./ Rates Vary
www.riolasvegas.com
Link Dump
Tweet of the Day – Just because Hellmuth is halfway around the world in Australia, that doesn’t mean the internets can’t get their little taste of his wrath. Things don’t seem to be going well down under for the 13-time WSOP champion.
Busted 24th: I SO wish I wasn’t completely ANGRY now! Feeling unlucky, and running EVERY SINGLE HAND in my mind over-and-over-and-over…
Full Tilt Poker Ex-Chief to Plead Guilty – Ray Bitar, poster boy for Black Friday, reached an agreement with the US Attorney General’s office where he’ll pony up $40million but avoid any jail time as he’s in desperate need of a heart transplant. This naturally generated its own share of twitter jokes, mostly in bad taste.
WSOP.com Real Money Poker Beta – Feel like test driving the first legal poker site in the States. Things aren’t quite to the point of the real deal but WSOP is offering up the chance to beta test their software and shake out the bugs. Closer and closer.
East Falmouth man wins $10m in ‘poker’ game – The word poker is encased in well-deserved quotation marks but the headline still caught my eye. The Mass lottery created some bizarre luck of the draw, fake poker game that awarded a $10,000,000 check. You can’t win that kind of money in your local no-skill-to-win 2/4 limit game.
Bet Raise Fold: The Story of Poker – The documentary previously known as BOOM from the minds of Jay Rosenkrantz, Taylor Caby and Ryan Firpo has been renamed and the new trailer is out.
Many of our lives changed five years ago today, as George W. Bush signed the Port Security Act into law.
At the time, many wondered if this marked the end of online poker, which had been booming at a rate that woulda had virtually the entire planet + Jupiter playing by now. Ironically, what was supposed to be a death knell for online poker would actually be what made several of my friends and colleagues (temporarily) rich … and the principals of Full Tilt and PokerStars and Ultimate Bet (momentarily, in the scheme of things) extremely powerful.
Let’s have a little flashback, shall we … to slightly more innocent-til-proven-guilty times … commemorating this uber-significant day in poker history:
None of this should come as a shock … after all, we saw this summer that Team WSOP employees were all wearing name tags that clearly identified them as worker-bees for HIE, Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment, the year-old parent company formed around online poker capo Mitch Garber. Also, we noticed that the wristbands identifying live tournament players clearly were pushing WSOP.COM … it wasn’t just because that’s where they wanted players to go for chip counts!
Anyhow, latest development on that progression … with their 888 partners Dragonfish, Harrah’s is set to launch a new suite of products that includes more real-money offerings for their (fully legal) UK customers and expanded play money options for (someday soon to be legal) Americans and others worldwide.
The final day of the Main Event gets underway shortly after 12pm today with 27 players remaining as they play down to the November Nine. Here’s how they’ll be seated, with about 1:20:00 remaining in level 30 (60,000/120,000/15,000):
The Main Event resumes shortly with 293 players remaining as they play three more hours, two hours at 6/12k/2k and one hour at 8/16/2k . The current leader is Saguhyon Cheong with 2,870,000 in chips. Some other notables returning from dinner break include:
Jesper Hougaard – 2,700,000
Alexander Kostritsyn – 1,990,000
Jean-Robert Bellande – 1,520,000
Phil Galfond – 1,345,000
Johnny Chan – 1,115,000
Michael Mizrachi – 735,000
Robert Mizrachi – 675,000
Notables eliminated during the day:
Hoyt Corkins
Danny Mizrachi
Adam Schoenfeld
Jason Mercier
Dwyte Pilgrim
Evelyn Ng
Mori Eskandani
Eric Morris
Full results so far can be found here and follow the updates over at wsop.com.
Day 3 of the $10,000 Main Event is currently on their dinner break with about 1,600 players remaining, already having played six of their eight scheduled hours of play. Among the notables not returning to the Amazon and Pavilion rooms with chips:
Daniel Negreanu, Joe Cada, Vanessa Rousso, David Sklansky, Dan Heimiller, Maria Ho, Lacey Jones, Chris Moneymaker, Erik Seidel, Kara Scott, Jennifer Leigh, David Williams, Gabe Kaplan and Capt. Tom Franklin.
The reported leader is Sweden’s Paul Kristoffersson with 617,600 in chips. Notables with healthy stacks include Robert Mizrachi (420,000), Scott Clements (415,000), Johnny Chan (400,000), Eric Baldwin (380,000), Jean-Robert Bellande (315,000), Kido Pham (292,000), Phil Galfond (280,000), Barry Shulman (260,000), Robert Varkonyi (220,000) and Vince Van Patten (187,000). More chip counts and updates can be found at wsop.com.
Sunday is a day off for the remaining players in the Main Event, with only the media event scheduled at the WSOP.
Day 2b eliminations
Day 2b got underway Saturday afternoon with Bruce Buffer, who finished with 160,000 in chips, offering the command to shuffle up and deal to the 2,700+ hopefuls at the Rio with varying chances of making it to Monday’s Day 3. Some of the notable names who won’t be returning include Phil Ivey, Todd and Doyle Brunson, Darvin Moon, Andy Bloch, Josh Arieh, Roy Winston, Orel Hershiser, Shannon Elizabeth, Sam Simon, John Phan, John Duthie, Chris Ferguson, and Team Pokerati/Loudmouth Poker sponsored pro Tom Schneider.
Day 2b survivors
After four levels of play, concluding in the middle of level nine, the unofficial chip leader is David Assouline from Canada with 387,800.
Notables also returning Monday include Vanessa Selbst (265,000), Archie Karas (242,700), Dan Bilzerian (216,600), Phil Galfond (195,400), Jason Mercier (186,300), Karina Jett (170,000), Eric Buchman (134,200) and Dan Harrington (114,500). The full list of the over 2,500 players returning to day 3 are available here, while the Day 3 table draw is now available.
WPT Bellagio Cup VI starts today
Saturday, the WPT held a press conference announcing various changes for the ninth season, with their first event in the US at the Bellagio starting today, Bellagio Cup VI. In a last-minute scheduling change, late registration is now available until Tuesday afternoon, with four 90-minute levels Sunday and Monday. Here’s an interview RawVegas.tv had with CEO Steve Heller and Kimberly Lansing:
![Outside the Box? WSOP.com apparently thinks real money online poker might appeal to people inclined to sit around waiting for satisfaction and opportunity to just show up at their door in 30 minutes or less. [pic: @RobertGoldfarb]](https://pokerati.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_4419-375x500.jpg)
